Advent Jacob

Genesis 27:41–28:22 - Advent 3 Midweek - December 16, 2015
Jacob – Access to God

Jacob fulfilled his name and supplanted his older brother Esau.  [Jacob fulfilled his name.  We learned about this last week.  His name means supplanter, which is one who gets what belongs to another by taking that person’s place.  Ordinarily, this is a sin.  The ninth commandment teaches us that we should fear and love God so that we do not scheme to get our neighbor’s inheritance, or get it in a way that only appears right, but help and be of service to him in keeping it.  Well, Jacob schemed.  And so he got what his older brother thought was his.  But this was no ordinary circumstance.  God had already promised it to Jacob.  Jacob feared and loved God.  He was not scheming to get his brother’s inheritance.  He was scheming to get his own inheritance.  And he didn’t get it in a way that only appeared right.  Actually, it appeared quite wrong.  And yet Jacob was justified in claiming what God had already said was his.  God said it was his.  It was Esau who did not help and be of service to him in keeping it.]

He got the blessing from their father Isaac that Esau had wanted for himself.  Esau was furious.  He consoled himself by planning to kill his brother once their father was dead.  So Jacob fled.  By his determination to gain the blessing that by God’s promise was already his, Jacob became a stranger to the very land that God promised him.  By his eagerness to receive the promise of God, he became a fugitive from his own brother who had become his bitter enemy.  

Claiming God’s blessing by believing the gospel has a way of doing this.  The world, which has at least some sense of fairness and justice, like Esau, knows you don’t deserve the blessing you claim to have and enjoy.  You’re a sinner.  You know it.  They don’t know the half of it.  God knows all of it.  And yet you claim what before the world makes you look like a crook, like your father Jacob.  You claim what you don’t deserve – a blessing you were not born with.  What makes you better than they?  For presuming to have God’s favor despite your many faults, you’ll be called a hypocrite. 

But you don’t claim your own merit or righteousness, do you?  You claim the merit and righteousness of Christ, the Seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  His righteousness stands against all accusation.  It is your birthright, because when you were baptized, you received a new birth – not a birth holding onto the heal of your elder brother, but a birth that unites you forever to the eternal Son of God made flesh for you.  You have been buried and raised with him.  His inheritance is yours.  His innocence is yours.  You have his permission and command to lay hold of it and claim it and not let anyone take it from you.  Esau hated his brother because he couldn’t understand any of this.  So also you will be hated by those who don’t believe the gospel. 

Faith in Christ sets us apart from others.  It divides us from those even within our own homes, as Jesus said would happen.  God promises us that our inheritance is secure in heaven.  He promises that nothing in creation can separate us from his love in Christ.  And yet while we live by faith, we find ourselves like Jacob to be strangers and pilgrims with danger all around.  We encounter every sort of temptation and threat and persecution that seeks to corrupt our faith in God.  All this makes us long for heaven.  As we complain in the hymn,

Far off I see my fatherland,
Where through Thy blood I hope to stand.
But ere I reach that Paradise,
A weary way before me lies.

My heart sulks at the journey’s length,
My wasted flesh has little strength;
My soul alone still cries in me:
“Lord, take me home, take me to Thee!”

Like Jacob, we are weary refugees in a hostile world.  As Jacob had nothing else with him but his father’s blessing, so we have nothing else with us but the word of God.  And as we find our Sabbath rest where this word is preached, so the Lord gave rest to weary Jacob in order preach the gospel to him.  He gave him a vision in a dream. 

A ladder appeared spanning from earth to heaven.  On it, the angels of God were ascending and descending.  At the top of it, stood the Lord who spoke to Jacob and blessed him.  God identified himself as the Lord God of his fathers, Abraham and Isaac.  He promised that the land on which he lay would be given to his descendants who would be as numerous as the dust of the earth.  They would spread in every direction so that in his Seed all families would be blessed. 

God confirmed the very blessing that Jacob had already received twice from his father.  This time, he heard it from God’s own mouth.  But what is more important than just the fact that he heard it from God’s own mouth is where God was standing and what Jacob saw.  Because when he received the blessing from his father Isaac, both times it was as good as from God’s own mouth, right?  But here, God revealed more. 

First, we see angels ascending and descending.  We call him the Lord God of Sabaoth.  Sabaoth means hosts, or armies, as in armies of angels.  Angels are God’s messengers.  The Bible calls them “ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation” (Hebrews 1:14).  They are not pansies.  They are not chubby babies.  They are soldiers.  They do the bidding of God, because it delights God to have his bidding done.  It delights God to serve you.  Where God speaks, there his angels obey his word. 

The Ladder upon which the angels in Jacob’s dream ascended and descended was the very Word of God before he was made flesh.  That’s right; it was an image and type of Christ.  Jesus himself told his disciple in John 1, “You will see greater things than these. … Most assuredly, I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” (John 1:50-51).  Here Jesus identifies himself as the ladder that connects heaven and earth. 

The greater things that Jesus said his disciples would see was the service of mercy that he would accomplish as their Savior, as Jesus sent word to John the Baptist:

“Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them.  And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.” (Matthew 11:4-6) 

Jesus is the ladder that connects heaven and earth, because he is the ladder that reunites God and man.  Heaven and earth were divided by our sin.  God and man were at enmity – at war – enemies like Jacob and Esau.  In his mercy, God promised to send his Son to take on human flesh and blood.  The Seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head.  The Seed of Abraham would become a blessing to all Adam’s children.  The eternal Son of God came down from heaven as announced by the angel Gabriel, and was conceived in the womb of a virgin.  He chose not pomp and glory, but lowliness and gentleness, as the angels announced to the shepherds who tended their flock by night: “You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12). 

This Babe is himself the Lord God of Sabaoth.  He is your Savior.  He is your shield and great reward. 

For where God and Man both in one are united,
With God’s perfect fullness the heart is delighted;
There, there is the worthiest lot and the best,
My One and my All and my Joy and my Rest.

This is the promise that God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  It is the promise fulfilled on Christmas.  He promised to bless all nations by coming to serve.  There is nothing that anyone could have done to bring the almighty Lord down – no compunction but that eternal love that has dwelt in his heart from eternity.  It was pure mercy – for you.  As we sing:

Love caused Thine incarnation,
Love brought Thee down to me;
Thy thirst for my salvation
Procured my liberty.
O Love beyond all telling,
That led Thee to embrace,
In love all love excelling,
Our lost and fallen race!

It was love.  It was not Jacob’s devotion.  It was not Isaac’s piety.  It was not Abraham’s faith.  It was the love of God that formed all of these virtues in the hearts of our fathers.  And it is love that works faith, hope, and devotion in us today.  It is God’s love for us that spans heaven and earth, not by building a ladder for us to climb, but by sending Jesus down who is the only way, the only ladder from here to our fatherland.  By his gospel of full and free forgiveness and mercy and favor, he does not demand that we raise ourselves.  No he raises us who by his word are humbled to see our deepest need.  And he fills this need.  He gives sight to the blind, strength to the powerless, he cleanses the unclean and raises the dead – all by preaching the gospel to the poor.  His gospel makes no demands on you.  But by its power it draws you to him who comes in the name of the Lord.  As we sing: 

Come from on high to me;
I cannot rise to Thee
Cheer my wearied spirit,
O pure and holy Child;
Through Thy grace and merit,
Blest Jesus, Lord most mild,
Draw me unto Thee!
Draw me unto Thee!

And he does.  He draws you to himself wherever his gospel is spoken to you.  He draws you to himself where he comes to you himself.  Where you hear his voice, where you receive what he gives in holy word and sacrament, there the very Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Sabaoth rends the heavens and comes to you in the name of the Lord.  Hosanna, we sing.  Because he comes to save us now.  He whose advent is accompanied by hosts of angels in his train, announcing his conception, his birth, his resurrection, and his ascension invites us to laud and magnify his glorious name with those same angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven.  We sing praises to him who, even as we wander as strangers on earth, gives us a glimpse of the Paradise he has promised.  He gives us a glimpse where he shines before our eyes the light of our salvation.  He who calls himself the way and the door is the very gate of heaven.  We enter his presence today the same way we enter heaven tomorrow – by faith in his atoning death on the cross. 

As Simeon once held the baby Lord Jesus in his arms and was thus prepared to depart this world in peace, so also we who receive his body and blood once shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins – we are thus prepared to continue our pilgrimage – in peace – with the knowledge that God does not hold any of our sin against us.  Though he may seem ever to be against us, in Christ he cannot be.  The Man Christ Jesus who invites us to eat and drink is himself the one Mediator between God and men who, as St. Paul says, by his dying on the cross has put to death the enmity and all hostility between us (1 Timothy 2:5, Ephesians 2:16).  We are reconciled. 

Only a reconciled God, a God graciously disposed toward poor sinners in need, could promise Jacob that he would remain with him and be his God.  This is the same God who was born of a virgin to be our Immanuel, that is, God with us.  He is with us wherever forgiveness is preached in his name.  He is pleased to make his home on earth in order to lead us to our home in heaven.  We find these homes become one home where Christ is with us.  Bethel means House of God.  Jacob made a vow that he would return and build it up proper.  And he did. 

But this is the house of God regardless of how we might build it and adorn it.  It is the house of God because here he comes to you and confirms again and again what he wants his children always to know and believe.  Our vows don’t make this place the house of God.  Jesus does.  His word does.  And so the vows we make when we are confirmed are merely to return to where this precious word is preached, where God made us his temple in Baptism, and where he continues to provide for us what has made for our peace.  Following Jacob’s example, we support the house of God with all that we he gives us, because following Jacob’s faith, we marvel and rejoice to recline in his gracious presence, as we sing:

Oh, where shall joy be found?
Where but on heavenly ground?
Where the angels singing
With all His saints unite,
Sweetest praises bringing
In heavenly joy and light.
Oh, that we were there!
Oh, that we were there!

And you are here.  You cannot conjure a dream like Jacob’s at Bethel.  You cannot return to the countryside of Bethlehem to hear the angels.  But you don’t need to.  Though you see no angels fill the sky now, Christ is here with us.  He is our Immanuel.  Where he is the angels ascend and descend.  Where he is, earth and heaven are joined, you and God are united.  Heaven rejoices, all fear is dispelled, all guilt is erased, all faith, hope, and love are firmly established in you.  Your future is certain, your God is with you.  He will not leave you until he has done what he has spoken.  Amen.